The surveillance software called Gotham, developed by US company Palantir, is billed as an all-rounder: gigantic amounts of data are brought together at lightning speed.
It only takes a few seconds to satisfy a police officer’s curiosity: name, age, address, fines, criminal record. In combination with selected cellphones and the contents of scanned social media channels, a comprehensive profile of any person appears in an instant.
With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), the surveillance program developed by the US technology company seems to make the dreams of police and intelligence agencies come true.
Three of Germany’s 16 federal states are already using Gotham: Bavaria, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. Baden-Württemberg is planning to implement it soon.
However, according to privacy advocates and civil rights organizations, it comes with a big problem: Along with those suspected of a crime, it can also ensnare innocent people.
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The German nonprofit group Society for Civil Rights (GFF) is fundamentally opposed to the use of programs like Palantir. That’s why it has lodged a constitutional complaint against the large-scale data analysis in Bavaria.
“Anyone who files a complaint, or who is a victim of a crime, or even just happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time can attract police attention via this software,” said GFF lawyer Franziska Görlitz.
According to the Berlin-based organization, such unlimited analysis of data breaches the fundamental right to informational self-determination and the confidentiality of telecommunications, which is guaranteed in the German constitution.
Whoever shows up on the police radar via this so-called data mining knows nothing about it. According to current law, police in Bavaria may use the Palantir software even when there is no indication of danger. In doing so, they are ignoring standards that apply in neighboring Hesse following a successful constitutional complaint by the GFF in 2023. The Federal Constitutional Court is yet to rule on a similar complaint against the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Chaos Computer Club criticizes opaque software
The hacker association Chaos Computer Club supports the constitutional complaint against Bavaria. Its spokesperson, Constanze Kurz, spoke of a “Palantir dragnet investigation” in which police were linking separately stored data for very different purposes than those originally intended.
“This is reason enough for this automated mass analysis not to become an everyday tool for police. But the collated data also lands in the deliberately opaque software of the US company Palantir, which the police will become dependent on for years,” said Kurz.
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The software company owned by US billionaire Peter Thiel made its software available to Bavaria in 2024; in Hesse, it has already been in use since 2017. The entrepreneur with German roots and New Zealand citizenship has a reputation for pursuing authoritarian goals and maintaining close contact with President Donald Trump and his political circle. US intelligence agencies and the military have long worked with the Gotham program.
In Germany, the Palantir software goes by various names, such as HessenData, or VeRA in Bavaria — an acronym for “overlapping systems research and analysis platform.” According to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and public service broadcasters NDR and WDR, police had already used VeRA in about 100 cases by May 2025.
One of these was the attack on the Israeli consulate in Munich in September 2024. The deputy chairman of the Police Union, Alexander Poitz, explained that automated data analysis made it possible to identify certain perpetrators’ movements and provide officers with accurate conclusions about their planned actions.
“That is how the Munich police were able to take control of the situation relatively quickly and bring it to a conclusion,” Poitz told public broadcaster MDR. The broadcaster reported that the US company had been granted unlimited access to the data files of the Bavarian police to merge the systems.
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The computer source code is stored on servers in Germany. However, critics point out that there is no guarantee against copies finding their way to the US, according to the media outlets.
Berlin: ‘Digital policy is power politics’
The obvious and growing dependence on foreign technology giants such as Palantir contradicts Germany’s stated aspirations. The new government, comprising the center-right Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), wrote “digital policy is power politics” in its coalition agreement earlier this year, stating its goals:
“We want a digitally sovereign Germany. To do this, we will dismantle digital dependencies by developing key technologies, securing standards, protecting and expanding digital infrastructure. We will achieve resilient value chains for key industries which are integrated at the European level, from raw materials to chips to hardware and software.”
Despite this, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) seems to be keeping his options open, having so far refused to rule out purchasing Palantir software for the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Police.
Dobrindt is breaking with the line of his predecessor Nancy Faeser (SPD), who had rejected the use of these programs in 2023.
The GFF’s constitutional complaint against the use of Palantir appears to have strong public support. On German online petition platform Campact, an appeal for politicians to stop the use of the software in
Germany was signed by more than 264,000 people within a week, as of July 30.
This article was originally written in German.
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